Thank you for reading, I am Dukefish, an EOS advocate and this blog series “Life of a Small Time Investor” is intended to share my experience with the crypto world and help those learn from my mistakes and triumphs. Though as always, this blog is not investment advice just how the chips have fallen for me so far. The greatest knowledge I can pass on to you is, make sure that you Do Your Own Research!

—

Summer is Coming

As the Winter Solstice has passed, it was nice to see a few days of green candles for Bitcoin before Christmas. Were we all hoping Santa was bringing us the moon? Alas I think this was a naive thought and we are seeing BTC’s value bouncing between $3700 and $4000 which is much better than the continuing fall. Lots of commentators were hoping this was the capitulation point but again we wont be able to see that point until a few months time when it will be blatantly obvious on the charts.

Trading volume remains at a noticeable increase for the last few days obviously, though the market dominance of BTC has fallen to 51% as money is being moved around back into the alt coins. Will 2019 be the year where some coins are able to break away from this Bitcoin control on value across the cryptosphere, not yet.

The market needs to mature and is still in its infancy, 2019 may seem some leaps forward but a more realistic expectation is 2020 will be the year of new ATH’s and a swell in marketcap. 2020 is important as this is when the next bitcoin halving is happening and mining is going to become more of a challenge.

Bitcoin mining in general has also suffered over the last few weeks and end of this quarter. With costs dropping the profitability of mining has rapidly decreased and a few big players have made recent announcements of down sizing to compensate for these losses in the bear market.

Well my last two entries talked heavily about the CPU crisis and the high rental costs that were plaguing us all from the network. Over the festive period this has certainly changed a little bit. The cost on Chintai to rent has fallen back down to pre-crisis levels with interest around 0.15% compared to the highs of 0.7% for a 7 days period of rental. The gambling site apps have all recent updated UI and adjusted how the games work, lowering some CPU cost for players.

When the network was clogged it made accessing dApps some what frustrating, causing the small staked user to disengage with the network. It is good to see that following community feedback and the use of the existing tools current available. (Chintai, ZKS etc). The ecosystem does provide existing solutions for high CPU usage. The next update of the EOSIO software will only bring more benefits to addressing this issue with REX implementation.

EOS value currently sits at $2.53 and has been following the general trend of rise and falls with Bitcoin. It is not as cheap to fill ones bags now but with the knowledge of the 4 billion dollar war chest BlockOne has, this price is undervaluing EOS still. The bear market is still keeping price down but the usage of EOS as a utility token is only growing as more dApps and projects launch on the network.

Scatter

Since my last entry, Scatter has evolved over the festive week. This app is the key player in allowing seamless and easy access to using dApps on the blockchain. It is the MetaMask of EOS, and while originally a browser extension this is no longer supported and the desktop version has become the prime direction of the dApp.

So there has been the update of the Scatter desktop to version 10, which brings quite the drastic brand new UI upgrade. I personally really like the style and appearance of the new app. It feels more user friendly and less ‘techy’ which I think will help to on board newer users. There are also cleaner integrated functions within the scatter app, with regards to permissions, viewing of tokens, staking/unstaking etc.

The team also provided a couple of airdrops to users of it’s token RIDL. This has been acquirable from early on with an ICO, early adopters and air-grabbing.

A reward at a flat rate of 5000 RIDL was given if you were an account that voted as part of the mainnet launch. As well as a 1:1 for people who had previously air grabbed and held RIDL tokens from a snapshot in September.

Scatter also offered a unique account name service at launch and while not active as a system yet there has been reassurances that those who bought at that time will receive these unique names and RIDL.

RIDL is trading on newdex at present (approx 620RIDL to 1 EOS on date of publish) following the airdrop, but it is a utility token that purpose is to be used in a reputation system that is planned for release later by the Scatter team.

Gambling dApps

As always when I discuss these gambling apps, I always start with this word of caution, gambling is addictive and you can lose it all. Remember to only wager what you are willing to lose. The casino model is one of the most profitable businesses out there for a reason. It seems as if the large dividends off gambling apps has started to slow a little bit.

The two main gambling tokens I hold and are MEV and DICE, I ditched the CITY tokens from my portfolio as I had a very small stack and felt that user volume was down, and I was not playing on their site at all. I also have a some BET tokens but they are still not listed on exchanges yet for liquidity, even though this was the first of these dice gambling apps. The values of all these dividends tokens seem to finding a more stable price point and the pools of tokens stake for the dividends has also started to reach critical mass.

In should be noted that both DICE and EOSBET sites have undergone a big UI revamp, attempts to improve CPU management and demand, as well as introducing new games. BET tokens are being rumored to have more use cases soon, with trading staking and gambling them for other games, but has yet to all be confirmed.

I think the early days of reaping large rewards from gambling apps as passive income is drawing to a close. There still good dividends of of your tokens but I feel the value will be lower than even present earnings and will remain with just a few big players surviving.

Trybe

So there is just over a month of pre-sale tokens available and the Christmas bonus model has come to a close. I got my extra tokens all smooth and hassle free, so I am pleased the Trybe team are able to do airdrops of there own token hassle free. The next airdrop is in January and tokens needed to be staked 20 days before the drop.

With this doubling up it means the total of 100 Million pre sale tokens, over 20% have been allocated. I am skeptical that the remaining 80% will be purchased in that time and am curious as to what will happen afterwards, whether there will be an additional distribution from the remaining tokens.

The results of the survey concluded and it seems the team are heading to developing a mobile app for Trybe next which is great for access and users.

At present the site seems to suffer on mobiles so a dedicated app will be a welcome addition to this ecosystem. The comment and ranking system update is still awaited but these updates and community inputs are really helping me appreciate Trybe and what they are trying to achieve.

—

Moving Forward

I still feel that we are feeling the joys of a bear market to end the calendar year off. The next year of 2019 is hoped to be christened ‘Rise of the dApps’ and the expectations of institutional money to start playing there hands to get into this space. It will happen eventually but it is going to be a slow trickle not a flood. The traditional markets such as the DOW are playing up and there will be a rippling effect it on the global financial market, how long it lasts and what knock on effects it have, it could be a boom or bust for all markets.

I am excited for the ongoing advancements of the technology in the blockchain space, and while value and marketcaps is going to yo yo for the foreseeable future, the groundwork underneath will prevail.

Excellent post. A lot to take-in here @dukefish. I agree that 2020 is much more likely to see a return to ATH than 2019…patience and perspective will serve us well here. You raise an intriguing point in relation to unsold pre-sale Trybe tokens..

Thanks, I do tend to ramble a lot. Though dont get me wrong, a new ATH in 2019 wouldnt go amiss.

Yes I saw mention once of an airdrop with leftover tokens but not been able to relocate or find another reference to it. As there a month left I am sure the number sold will rise but even so I do not think that all the pre sale tokens will find owners.